Oz in 2017

As 2017 comes to a close, let's look back on what has happened these last twelve months with Oz:

* We got not one, not two ... but THREE versions of Oz as Series: NBC's "Emerald City" (heavily influenced by MGM and "Game of Thrones"), WB's Boomerang "Dorothy And the Wizard of Oz" (an animated series to MGM, but not quite in canon and lacking exposition and consistency) and Amazon's "Lost in Oz" online series.
Each of these shows has varied degrees of acceptance and response ... but I feel like "Lost in Oz" is the best of the bunch and deserves a second season most of all.

* A date for the "Wicked" movie was announced for December 2019

* L Frank Baum's "Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" story - as well as the short story "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" - was bestowed with a new illustrated book by Eric Shanower and IDW Publishing

* the 1987 PanMedia/Cinar-dubbed anime series for "Wonderful Wizard (and Marvelous Land, Ozma and Emerald City) of Oz" was finally released to DVD and Standard-Blu-ray home video by Discotek Media, coinciding with its 30th Anniversary - so now viewers can finally watch the actual episodes, even if the American quality is not as good as the original Japanese release (but hopefully the original Japanese episodes with be released further down the line with English-subtitles).

* John Fricke made a vague mention of some "jittery" forthcoming news yet to be announced . . .

* the Fan-made documentary "Remembering Return to Oz" with a series of interviews is nearing completion, most of all concluding with an interview on Fairuza Balk - the release should hopefully be in 2018.

* L Frank Baum's Oz books "Ozma of Oz" was one-hundred-and-ten, "Lost Princess" reached its Centennary - which was celebrated at OzCon in Portland, Oregon in June-July this year.


Next year we celebrate the 100th Anniversary for L Frank Baum's "the Tin Woodman of Oz" ... and who knows what else the year will have in store for Oz, planned or surprise?




Thank you for staying tuned to this Blog and the Royal Podcast ... we'll see you in the New Year!

The Royal Podcast of Oz: The 2017 Christmas Special

Jay reads two stories from Oziana 2013, "Jinnicky Saves Christmas" by Nathan DeHoff and his own "The Way of A Lion." Afterward, he and Nathan chat about creating their tales.

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The Royal Podcast of Oz: Jay and Sam vs The Muppets Wizard of Oz

Jay and Sam tackled The Muppets Wizard of Oz. When did they see it and how? What did they think? How much does Sam hate Quentin Tarantino?

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The Royal Podcast of Oz: Garrett and Angelo vs The Muppets Wizard of Oz

Former podcast guests Garrett Kilgore and Angelo Thomas talk The Muppets Wizard of Oz.

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Creating Oz dolls

When Oz the Great and Powerful came out, I decided to pick up dolls based on the characters. I didn't have a lot of Oz toys, and decided this would be a nice start. This was followed by picking up the new line of Barbie dolls based on the MGM film. Finally, I picked up a Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return doll that was the closest to her film appearance.

But being a fan of the Oz books and knowing of many of the Oz characters who have rarely appeared in film—much less be made into a mass-produced toy—I decided maybe to look into making my own custom Oz dolls. Specifically, Ozma and a Neill-inspired Glinda. (Thanks to the above, I had three Glindas already, two different costumes for Oz the Great and Powerful and MGM.) Getting another idea, I decided to add Polychrome to the list.

Finally, after spotting potential dolls to use for bases, I decided to go for it. I began looking online for dresses. I know how to whipstitch and mend clothes and back in the day made tiny plush characters, but by no means was I wanting to create a dress from scratch.

Here's what I picked up from Amazon:

- One rainbow dress.
- Two white wedding dresses. (Note: these came from a seller in China and took 40+ days to arrive, so plan ahead on this one or find another one.)
- One Barbie Fashionista Terrific Teal doll. (This would serve as my base for Glinda since she has red hair.)

These other items I bought on eBay or in stores, but I'm linking to Amazon listings for illustrative purposes.
- One Barbie Careers Farmer doll. (This would be my base for Ozma.)
- Kneadite (known as "greenstuff" by model makers).
- Various colored sequins.
- Red tulle
- Beading wire
- Rainbow colored ribbon
- Acyrlic paint, blue, cranberry (but I should've gone with metallic red) and metallic gold colors
- Hot glue sticks
- Paint brushes
- Velcro circles
- Small squares of red and green material.
- Red glitter nail polish.
- Black cylindrical coffee stir (this was free)
- A loose nude blonde Barbie doll from a thrift store, carefully selected for quality. (This would be my base for Polychrome.)

Items I already had at home:
- Needle and thread.
- Twist tie.
- Scissors.

I had all of Polychrome's materials together first and she was fairly simple The rainbow dress had a glittery belt that I didn't like, but it was easy to remove with scissors. I considered giving her the cap seen in Neill's pictures, and I suppose I could using a small amount of kneadite, but considering that kneadite + doll hair = a big mess to remove, I decided to use some rainbow ribbon around the head instead. Some more rainbow ribbon tied around her arms and shoulders, and the look was complete. I have since altered it with the use of hot glue, affixing the ribbon directly to her head and dress.
Ozma and Glinda both proved a little bit of a challenge. Their designs had been inspired long ago when I was digitally coloring a scan from the International Wizard of Oz Club's edition of The Oz Toy Book and I discovered a nice costume design for them that involved them having white dresses. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz specifically says Glinda wears a white gown, and Boq mentions that "only witches and sorceresses wear white." Ozma is neither a witch or a sorceress, but considering her level of authority and that she can do magic, it would not be disrespectful for her to wear that color.

Glinda has blue eyes according to Wonderful Wizard, but the Terrific Teal doll has brown. A task for a careful hand and eye (and I am nearsighted with glasses), I repainted the eyes using a bit of blue paint on the tip of a needle.

Although their dresses were actually completed last, I'll go ahead and detail what I did with them first. Note that I did cut off some material from the red square of material to make Ozma's poppies. The dresses I purchased had little brooches on the chest. Glinda's tore off while I was applying it. I didn't intend to show it, but had intended to hot glue red sequins over it. This allowed me to apply the sequins directly to the dress. Ozma's did not tear off, but I made a design with a bit of hot glue, applying a purple sequin at the top, a blue one to the right, a red one to the bottom, a yellow one to the left, and a green one in the middle overlapping the others. I had intended to put these on a base made of kneadite, but the design with just sequins looked better.

The Material was made into cloaks that flowed from their shoulders, tucked into the front of the dress and sewn in. Further tucks and folds were secured with hot glue.

Ozma's crown, I had to decide not to use the cylinder crown she has on top of her head in some illustrations. The only option would be to secure it permanently to her head with hot glue or kneadite. The circling tiara was made of beading wire, with the OZ logo made of kneadite and painted gold. The flowers were made of bits of red material folded in half and rolled a little crookedly, sewn to secure their look. They were secured to the crown using unpainted kneadite.

Now, you might say, "What is kneadite?" and it's a sculpting epoxy I first used back when I created Oz action figures. It's called "greenstuff" because it arrives in strips of blue and yellow epoxy, which you knead together into a green epoxy that can be sculpted into any form you like. It bonds to most surfaces.

Glinda's hair is secured in a hairnet that she wears in many illustrations. A hairnet worn for fashion rather than practical purposes is called a "spood," and I used red tulle to make the spood, bunching up the hair in the tulle and creating the hairnet look by twisting it together on the top of the doll's head, securing it with a twist tie.

The twist tie tie off proved to be the base of the cylinder worn on Glinda's crown that Neill designed. I went for a simple design, made completely of kneadite. However, before anyone copies what I did, I must stress that once that kneadite is on the doll's head, it's on there, so you're going to have to commit to making this change to the doll. It will be permanent. Once it was set and dry, I painted it with the cranberry paint, making it pink. I then hot glued some red sequins on it. A friend who has experience with redressing dolls suggested that I redo her crown with red glitter nail polish, which admittedly made a very nice effect, although I had to work around the sequins.

I decided to accessorize Ozma with her scepter and the Magic Belt. I picked up a coffee stir and trimmed it short, adding kneadite to cap off the bottom and creating the OZ logo at the top. Painting it gold finished the look. The Magic Belt was made with more of the rainbow ribbon painted gold. Velcro fasteners made it removeable, and a pattern of red then silver sequins were hot glued on.

 That's it, that's how I did it.

I might do more. Mattel has a line of petit body type dolls that'll work for characters like Dorothy, Trot and Betsy.

If you use some of my ideas that I've detailed here, let me know with a comment. You don't have to use the same dolls I used or the same dresses or ideas. Make these characters the way you want. That's the fun of doing crafts where you create a customized figure.

Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship

Given the current age of self-publishing, an Oz book released by a major publisher is pretty interesting. Enter Gabriel Gale's Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship.

Gabriel Gale has been the subject of a featured article in The Baum Bugle, and has featured at Ozstravaganza in Chittenango, New York. I even had someone heartily recommend the book and tell me about his presentation.

Ages of Oz seems to be a potential franchise of books that they plan to branch into film. In fact, it seems it was originally planned to be a film franchise before they decided to make it into a series of novels first. That seems to explain why the book is written by Lisa Fiedler. Story by Gabriel Gale, written by Lisa Fiedler. The series is planned to serve as a prequel, midquel and sequel to Baum's books (Thompson and the rest are ignored).

A Fiery Friendship follows the adventures of young Glinda Gavaria as she sets out to seek her destiny as she seeks how to rescue her mother Tilda from the wicked witch Aphidina and rescue Ember, the Fire Fairy. Joining her are a number of new friends, chief among these Locasta, a girl from the Gillikin Country who she doesn't get along with at first.

I bought this book in late July, and only just finished today. You'll notice that late July was also when I when I posted my last book review here.

Although I realize that I am also a writer of Oz fiction and may have similar criticisms aimed at my work sometime, I'm going to have to say it...

I found the book exceptionally boring. There was nothing particularly interesting about the characters. Yes, I know, this introduces Glinda and Locasta as young women and supposedly sets up how the order of Wicked Witches took over Oz before the Wizard arrived, but besides that, I was left wondering "so what?" Glinda taking on a task that has the end goal to restore Ozma to the throne is basically something Baum established in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and fan interpretation that she may have orchestrated an event or two in Wonderful Wizard is so common, some of my ideas wound up popping up in another work I recently enjoyed by someone who I'd never contacted.

Oz prequels have been quite the trend. I've even thought of a few concepts over the years and even tried to pen them into stories. The one I did complete, The Way of a Lion, actually won an award. However, I wrote that to complement the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to provide a deeper story arc for the Cowardly Lion. The problem with many Oz prequels—including the ideas I've had—is that they try to define how Oz works in a way that limits future stories, or even prevents other stories from taking place in the same continuity. And these ideas are never universally embraced by the fans.

In addition, the story felt like it was the first third of a movie, novelized and stretched out to over 400 pages. A recurring motif that bothered me was splitting a sentence of prose into its own paragraph for dramatic effect, eschewing typical sentence structure. This is fine if you're blogging or writing some piece where you're addressing the reader. In storytelling prose, it's typically not done. It probably bugged me much more because I'd just done a sentence and paragraph structure overhaul of a story a couple of friends wrote.

Perhaps Ages of Oz will go somewhere interesting, but A Fiery Friendship failed to impress me. Okay, the illustrations are impressive, but they don't really feel like Baum's Oz. They're nicely detailed and all, but there's no spirit of fun or whimsy that's a trademark of Baum's Oz. In fact, that's true of the text as well.

The Chronicles of Oz - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Sometime back, I noted that my own The Royal Podcast of Oz was the only podcast I could find dedicated to Oz. And while that's still true, there is another podcast that's doing Oz: Crossover Adventure Productions.

This podcast presents something I'd love to do: full audio dramas with sound effects, a full cast and music. They seem to be famous for Doctor Who dramas, but more recently, they've finished the first season of The Chronicles of Oz, which adapted The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in six episodes.

To be fair, I'm about to start the final episode, but I think I've heard enough to give a good review of it. And I do mean good.

If you're reading this, chances are you've read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and know the story, and yes, despite this being a "reimagining," it follows the plot of the book pretty well. The difference is how they do it.

It's clear that the writer behind the series—Aron Toman—knows his Oz and decided to present an Oz based on the entire Baum series, presented as a unified world. Lurline, Ozma, Jinxland, Oogaboo, Zixi and Mombi get name dropped. The Wicked Witch has an assistant named Ugu.

However, it's not quite as if this is going to be for all ages. There's some language parents would likely not want young listeners listening to, and this take on Oz gets more on the violent side. The death of the Wicked Witch of the East prompts civil war in Munchkinland. Boq is reimagined as a Munchkin who volunteers to see Dorothy to the Emerald City, but he's no longer around by the time Dorothy meets the Scarecrow. This is just giving you an idea of what you're in for, not a list.

There's some additions and changes to streamline the story and make it more dramatic, but since this is a free-to-access podcast, I'm going to let you discover it for yourself.

The voice cast does a very good job and manages to be very entertaining with the script. Being an Australian-based podcast, some non-American accents are present. The sound effects are nicely done and the music is excellent. So, it's not just a free audio drama, it's a free quality audio drama.

That said, I wound up enjoying the presentation. This is what I'd want from an Oz for more mature audiences, one that focuses on mature storytelling over reveling in mature subject matter. Looking forward to finishing the series on my way to work tomorrow morning, and look forward to future Oz stories from this podcast.

You can download the mp3 files from their website, or you can listen to the series on YouTube, or subscribe through iTunes or search "Crossover Adventure Productions" in your favorite podcast app, and if that fails, you can give it the link to this RSS feed.

The Royal Podcast of Oz: Garrett Speaks!

Jay chats with recurring podcast guest Garrett Kilgore to finally discover his personal love of Oz and what he's been doing lately.

Garrett's YouTube Channel

The Art of Oz, Garrett's blog

You can listen, download and subscribe at the podcast site, or use the players and links below. The Royal Podcast of Oz is available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Google Play Music and other podcast services and aggregators that mirror these.



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Oz Con International 2018

Registration is finally open for Oz Con International 2018. Jay Davis and Colin Ayres are chairing next year as OzCon International heads back to California to celebrate the centennial of The Tin Woodman of Oz, as well as explore the wonders of Oz and L. Frank Baum in Hollywood.

Current guests of honor include James Ortiz, Robert Payes, Andy Mangels, Aljean Harmetz, and John and Bjo Trimble.

OzCon will feature the classics, such as the costume contest, the quizzes, the Oz Club auction, the Treasure Hunt, and all the good Ozzy fun we can offer.

Plus, the day after, Disneyland!

The convention is August 10-12, 2018, so mark your calendars, make your registrations and reservations, and join us!

The Royal Podcast of Oz: The New Animated Oz

Jay and Angelo Thomas talk about the new animated Oz series: Boomerang's Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz and Amazon's Lost in Oz!

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The Royal Podcast of Oz: Lion of Oz discussion

Jay and Sam follow up and supplement their commentary for Lion of Oz with a standard discussion episode.

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Windham Classics' The Wizard of Oz

Sometime back, I talked about the first digital Oz game, Adventure in Oz for the TI-99/4A. In that blog, I mentioned I had previously (erroneously) believed Windham Classics' Wizard of Oz game to be the first. But I haven't blogged about that game before.

So let's fix that.

Windham Classics was a series from Spinnaker Software that presented five games based on literary titles. The first couple were platformer games that had a menu of commands to bring up. These were Alice in Wonderland (based on the two Alice books by Lewis Carroll) and Below the Root (based on the Green Sky Trilogy by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and actually served as a continuation of the story of the books). There was also Swiss Family Robinson, a real-time text adventure featuring many puzzles. The final pair were a couple of elaborate text adventures with graphics and music to enhance the gameplay. These were Treasure Island and The Wizard of Oz.

It's been awhile for some, but I've played and completed all of the games. They were available for several computer systems, including DOS on the IBM PC, the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. I played them through emulators, specifically the Commodore 64 versions.

Loading The Wizard of Oz (and Treasure Island) in the Commodore 64 can be challenging for the novice user. Most emulators let you select the file you need to load ("wind") and enter it automatically. The problem with these games is the long loading time. The emulator CCS64 speeds it up right away and makes the loading time no problem with the default settings. For other emulators, such as Frodo and Vice, you need to ensure the type of drive being emulated is a standard 1541, and that the main drive (Drive 8) is the only one being emulated. You can also select speed up options to help cut down the wait to the Windham Classics loading screen. The game will require you to swap discs, which is possible with emulators, but you might want to make sure you know how to do before settling in to play a game. It's also worth noting that the game does require quotation marks, and on the C64, the equivalent is holding down the shift key and pressing 2.

The DOS version I have played, but the versions online are lacking many of the game's files, so the game can't be completed after you meet the Wizard. The game came on the large floppy discs encased in cardboard, so for someone to get those files, they would not only would need to own that version, they would also need a drive capable of handling those discs. The Apple II version seems to be complete.

My recommendation for which version to play goes to the Commodore 64 version. Not only is it complete, but the graphics are in full color.

The game's story features an expanded version of The Wizard of Oz that can be played through. You play as Dorothy and as you travel around Oz using an interesting parser. In addition to moving by using the commands N, NW, NE, E, W, SE, SW, UP, DOWN, ENTER, EXIT to navigate the game, and the standard "TAKE ITEM" style commands, you can also address characters with commands such as "GLINDA, TALK EVIL WITCH."

The story expansion is several features from The Marvelous Land of Oz. As you head west after meeting the Wizard, you find Mombi's cottage and are joined by Tip when you escape. Along the way to the Witch's castle, you build Jack Pumpkinhead and bring him and the Sawhorse to life. Mombi's attempts to thwart the return of the Scarecrow to the Emerald City in Marvelous Land are now turned into tricks by the Wicked Witch. The Wizard names Jack his successor instead and when you head south, you run into Jinjur and have to head back to the Emerald City and escape by building the Gump. After falling into the Jackdaws' Nest, you have to return to Emerald City once again, this time bringing an army of tin soldiers who chase away Jinjur's army. In addition, the Hammerheads are beaten by putting everyone to sleep with a magic music box and commanding none other than Tiktok to carry your friends over the hill.

Probably the most controversial change made to the game's story is Glinda at the end revealing that Tip is the lost prince of Oz. He's not a transformed Ozma, just a missing prince. It's a little disappointing given the legacy of the Oz characters. Making Tip a girl would have been a bit more palatable.

For anyone who enjoys retro gaming and Oz, it's worth playing once. However, given the linear style of the game, it's unlikely anyone will be playing it many times unless they want to experience it again.

You can watch a playthrough here.

MyAbandonware.com has downloads for the partial DOS version as well as the Apple II and C64 versions.

The Classic Adventure Solution Archive has a walkthrough if you need help solving the puzzles as well as links to more information about the game.

Below are pictures of the game's packaging from the Computer Game Museum.

Adapting "Return to Oz": from Screen to Page (part 3)

Back in June I started making comparisons of some of the tie-in books for Disney's "Return to Oz", adapting the almost-two-hour long movie into shorter children's books and whether they work well or not.

"Return to Oz" is a very good and fine film (despite its problems), but some of the important and smaller aspects of it don't carry well in condensed form.

Here we are going to look at one of its shorter adaptations, the second Little Golden Book: "Escape from the Witch's Castle".

Dorothy's bad hair;  Billina looks hard;  2 sofas yet everyone crams onto one side ... and where are the safety walls to prevent falling off?!

In this book, the second installment of the four part series, Dorothy and Billina and Tik-Tok are looking "through Oz" for Scarecrow, who is missing.  The first change mentioned is that the Emerald City (no word of it being in ruins is mentioned) and where Princess Mombi lives are separate buildings.

When Mombi (who is already wearing the dark haired head from the film) captures Dorothy, Tik-Tok suddenly winds down, so Billina has to attack Mombi to allow Dorothy to escape, but iron bars block the door; and when Mombi threatens to cook Billina, that's when Dorothy kicks Mombi and is captures again, the girl and the hen taken to the tower.

Fortunately, Jack Pumpkinhead is also in the tower with them, who he mistakes Dorothy for his missing mum, before she sets him straight (he's described as a mess, but he doesn't really look that badly separated).  Jack's story of how he came to live with Mombi's Powder of Life gives Dorothy an idea of how to escape.

  "Soon" they get Tik-Tok upsatirs while Dorothy gets Mombi's (non-ruby) key and the Powder - accidentally waking Mombi's head up in the process!  The other heads wails, Dorothy dodges past Mombi's headless body and rejoins her friends in the Tower room who have finished assembling their flying Gump (Tik-Tok did not seem to wind down this time), which Dorothy sprinkles with the Powder and they "lift" off the floor and through the open window.   Each with their own hopes for the future, Dorothy rests as she and her friends soar off into the night sky.

The story itself is not so bad, but it's the illustrations that are lacking.  Part 1 ("Dorothy Returns to Oz") was painted (with oil?), while "Dorothy in the Ornament Rooms" had inked drawings with painted (watercolour?) illustrations and "Dorothy Saves the Emerald City" having soft airbrush paintings ... this book (which does not have "Dorothy" in the title) has pictures that are done in markers and the lines are thick, thicker than any of the other pictures in the other books.

Billina looks hard and too smooth, like a clay figure, instead of a living moving creature, while Tik-Tok looks ... well, it's hard to say.  He doesn't quite look as easily movable like the film, yet some pictures have him look and glance in a way not possible.   In some pictures Dorothy looks fine, but in others she looks more manly (once or twice she looks like Tobey Maguire in a dress; and another time she bares a strong resemblance to Bruce Timm's Superman).  Dorothy's black Kansas shoes have also acquired a strap, making the pair become "mary janes" (and her hair on the cover is just awful!)

.  Jack's pumpkin head is supposed to be round, yet his face looks flat.  

Possibly the worst change, visually, is the construction of the Gump: in the film the two sofas have backing, to prevent the riders from falling off the sides ... but here both sofas are open and have no walls, which was more a choice of showing the characters in illustrations than being practical storywise.  This presents the threat of the characters actually falling off the sides, especially Dorothy rolling over in her sleep!  And despite being brought to life, he doesn't say anything or really have any personality in the last three pages.

 

When you look at this book on its own and without the full context of the film, this short story makes absolutely no mention of the real threat to Oz, its people or its capital, the missing monarch or the usurpers and how and where the good characters need to go or what to do.  It is not mentioned HOW Mombi has the beautiful heads or why.  Just that she is "a terrible witch" who collects the heads of beautiful young ladies.  Her own ugly head is never shown (but it is mentioned in that certain scene).  Nor is the exact number of beautiful heads recounted.  And, again, Mombi seems to have no connection to the disappearance of Scarecrow and nowhere is the Nome King mentioned.  Also, no lunch-pail, or Wheelers, or even the "ghost in the mirror/palace".

While the other three Little Golden Books do end with a somewhat happy note of hope, this one doesn't seem as strong.

This book may be the weakest of the set, but it is not the worst adaptation of the movie ...

A Chapter Closes

A long, long time ago, an Oz fan had a dream of creating a website. After finding free hosting, he tinkered around with HTML and built a small but original content-rich website and titled it "Dorothy and Ozma Productions." The website offered capsule reviews of Oz films, an original biography of L. Frank Baum, e-texts of the Oz books (including the first e-texts of Dot and Tot of Merryland and Queer Vistors from the Marvelous Land of Oz) and original content for free downloads, as well as old digital Oz games for systems no longer made that would have to be emulated to be played. (With a copyright disclaimer, of course.)

The website went through a few iterations, eventually being retitled "The Royal Website of Oz" and getting its own actual domain. Thanks to a generous friend, it was hosted for free and a forum was added when the International Wizard of Oz Club decided to close their forums. An ambitious wiki project was started.

However, the fan who had started the website found other ways to express his love of creating and sharing Oz content. He had begun blogging, which spun off into a podcast and even a series of videos. He even began writing Oz stories and even published a full-length Oz book and attending a regular Oz convention. So progress on maintaining and expanding the website eventually ground to a halt.

If you haven't guessed, of course, I'm talking about my own story here.

About two months ago, the Royal Website of Oz went offline. I still have the domain, but the server is no longer active. My generous friend who had hosted the site has yet to reply as to what happened, but all I can assume is that the free ride the website had is no longer open. The forum is gone, the wiki has some pages archived through Internet Archive, and an older version of the website is still online. A later version of it is also available through Internet Archive as well.

While it's a little sad that this has happened, it's not as if all is lost. I still have that content I had, and I believe I can use the blog to bring some of the best of it back. I had even begun a secondary blog titled The Royal Library of Oz, which managed to present e-texts as blog entries.

If you want an Oz forum, there's a Wizard of Oz subreddit that could use more members.

Why am I not looking to get my own host and revive the site? Well, with writing Oz stories (and now other non-Oz stories) and running a podcast, this blog, helping with "Oz and Ends" for The Baum Bugle and now chairing Oz Con International 2018, I don't feel the drive to pursue such a venture.

So, one chapter closes as others open and continue. See you in Oz, folks.

Playing Adventure in Oz

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the first Oz computer game, Adventure in Oz for the TI-9/94a. Since then, I've played it a few more times and have some hints... If you want them.

Find the yellow brick road or red brick road. Both lead to the Emerald City. It is also on these roads that you find the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion.

Your companions help out, which typically breaks down into preventing you from wasting a turn. The Tin Woodman will cut down trees to cross ravines and fight the Fighting Trees. The Lion will scare off other animals from attacking you. I have yet to find if the Scarecrow helps with anything.

Ozma's palace vanishes as soon as you are done there. You must go directly west of the location I marked on the map below to find her.

The backwards road is very simple: just travel west if you want to go east, go east if you want to go west, go north if you want to go south, and go south if you want to go north. Be careful that you don't get complacent repeatedly tapping keys.

While there are no onscreen instructions telling you which direction the roads are in, sticking to the yellow brick road in Munchkin or Winkie Countries actually lead you to the characters the Wizard wants you to find.

To cross a river, travel north or south and head back to the river to see if a little man pops up to ferry you across. This will likely take multiple tries.

If you come across a lake or mountain range, go another direction.

The following map has been compiled from multiple playthroughs of the game. Each X is the location of the important sites of the game: the Wizard's Palace, Ozma's Palace in the North, the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda's Palace in the South, and the Woggle-Bug's home in the East. These are the locations, but there are many obstacles between the Emerald City and them.

You can find the game and how to play it in the blog I linked to. Happy Adventure in Oz!

Jack Snow celebrated

A little over six years ago, I finished writing about the Oz works of Jack Snow and mentioned that is grave is unmarked. I also quoted a criticism of the Snow family that suggested they were ashamed of him and left his grave unmarked. Two and a half years after that, the post was updated with new information that suggested perhaps the family was poor and couldn't help Jack at all.

And now, it seems, that is being rectified at last.

Michael Gessel of the International Wizard of Oz Club shared this news that Jack Snow will be honored with a headstone Tuesday, August 15, during a ceremony celebrating his life and work in radio, speculative fiction, and yes, Oz.

A representative of Snow's family, James C. Oda, is involved as well as Gessel, and both will be speaking at the ceremony.

While the past remains unchanged, going forward, it is good to know that people want to remember and celebrate Jack Snow, with a memorial honoring one of the Royal Historians at last.

Jay binged Lost in Oz Season 1

It feels like forever ago when the pilot episode of Amazon's original series Lost in Oz (unconnected to any other project to anything that's used that name ever), and then sometime back, they added the next two episodes alongside it to create Lost in Oz: Extended Adventure. Now, Amazon has a complete first season of 13 episodes, 22-23 minutes in length.

After finding a magic journal, a modern-day girl named Dorothy and her dog Toto are taken in their house to the modern land of Oz. The original story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz happened, but that Dorothy is the great-grandmother of this Dorothy. I don't think the later Oz books by Baum happened in this continuity. There's characters based on the characters from the other books, like an inventor named Tinker, a painter named Smith, a giant Munchkin boy named Ojo whose aspirations go beyond his father's farm, a cowardly lion, a young witch named West, a rag doll named Patches, and a wicked witch named Langwidere (no headswapping, but she is able to make herself look like other people). Ozma and the Wizard don't get mentioned at all. Magic in this Oz is a science based around certain elements, and there's not a ban on it as kids are seen learning it in school. In addition to this, there's the subplot that Dorothy's mother has some idea of what's going on.

The thirteen episode series revolves around a story arc that includes Dorothy wanting to get home as Langwidere tries to take over Oz in a rather interesting manner. (A bit more than "Steal all the magic, take over Oz.") Each episode has a neat mini-arc in its 22-23 minute runtime.

The plots are largely original, using concepts from the books as plot devices rather than plot models (Glinda's lie-detecting pearl that briefly appears in The Marvelous Land of Oz becomes a major item of interest and is called "the Pearl of Pingaree"). The overall story arc is concluded by the end of the final episode, although there is a hook for continuing adventures. (See, Emerald City? That's how you do it.) Animation is excellent, the story is pretty good and enjoyable enough to keep you watching. Those looking for a purist adaptation of the Oz series or a continuation will not find it here, though.

Highly recommended for kids and Oz fans who enjoy different takes on the material.

Ozbusters! Shirley Temple and MGM's Wizard of Oz

One regular piece of trivia about MGM's film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is that Shirley Temple was considered for the role of Dorothy. It's been reported many ways, some saying that Judy Garland was who the studio went with because they couldn't get Shirley Temple. Yet, there are people out there who say the story is entirely false and that the role was always intended for Judy Garland.

What is the answer? Did MGM want Shirley Temple? Or was Judy Garland the first choice?

I believe the answer is more likely both.

What we're missing here is context of who we're talking about when we say "MGM." There are many, many people involved in making a movie and running a movie studio.

The Wizard of Oz was the dream project of producer Mervyn LeRoy, who was the driving force behind the movie. And it seems that he was the one who envisioned it to launch Judy Garland to stardom.

However, MGM was owned by a big theater chain called Loews' (this is part of how Hollywood worked back then), and noting the estimated big cost of the movie, they asked LeRoy to look into loaning Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox.

The general public loved Shirley Temple, who had starred in a long series of films from Fox. Pint sized and her face framed in little golden curls, Shirley had talent in singing little songs, dancing, remembering her lines and generally looking cute. Even then-Oz historian Ruth Plumly Thompson had expressed interest in Temple playing Dorothy, saying that if such a project happened, promoting the books with Temple would be easy.

As it turned out, Temple was a fan of the books, and photos of Temple in her home revealed the Oz books on her shelf. She claimed in her autobiography Child Star that when her mother said that she should play Dorothy, Temple said she'd rather meet Dorothy. (I feel the same, Shirley.)

However, LeRoy had a specific version of Oz in mind. Previous versions of The Wizard of Oz on stage and film had reduced Dorothy from a lead character to a side character, giving more presence to the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman. It would be easy to see Shirley Temple fitting the bill of a sweet little girl from Kansas who is whisked away to a magical world where she joins with a number of unusual friends played by comedy heavies who would basically take over the movie.

But that was not LeRoy's vision. His Oz would return Dorothy to a focal character. Yes, there would still be big talent as Dorothy's friends, but they wouldn't crowd Dorothy out of the focus of the film. For that, he'd need his Dorothy to be a strong actress who would wow the audience with her talent. And this was not what Shirley Temple would offer. Imagine Shirley Temple singing "Over the Rainbow." It'd be cute, but not the strong ballad the movie would need to open with.

Roger Edens, who worked with Judy on her singing during her MGM years, went to 20th Century Fox to hear Shirley Temple sing in person. He reported back that Temple didn't have the range they wanted for their musical Wizard of Oz, and so MGM kept Judy in the role, Loew's seemingly content that LeRoy and his crew knew what they were doing.

Fox would report that Shirley had lost the role of Dorothy, while Temple's mother was angry that a Fox producer claimed they had the Oz rights when MGM had purchased them from Samuel Goldwyn.

There's some interesting after notes here. Getting Shirley Temple would have involved Fox loaning her to MGM. While they didn't loan her, they did loan Jack Haley to MGM, who took over as the Tin Man when Buddy Ebsen was hospitalized.

As a response to The Wizard of Oz, Fox had Shirley Temple lead a film version of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird, a play that opened on Broadway in 1910 and like Oz also had silent film adaptations. (Personal recommendation: the 1918 film.) Featuring a cast of unusual characters and children in lead roles, the play had two children seek the Blue Bird of Happiness through a series of strange lands before realizing the Blue Bird was at home all along. The moral was very reminiscent of that of MGM's Wizard of Oz.

Fox's Blue Bird was a flop, and so was Shirley Temple's next film Young People. Her parents bought out her contract, and she was signed on at MGM, where they intended for her to star in projects with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, but it didn't work out and she only did one film with the studio. It seems Oz screenwriter Noel Langley worked out a treatment for an Oz sequel and it was floated that they'd have Temple as the lead, but it never got further than that.

Temple would do a series of unimpressive films with other studios before leaving film. She eventually began the Shirley Temple's Storybook television show in 1958, with the show turning into The Shirley Temple Show with regular color shows (the first season had color and black and white episodes), the premiere episode being The Land of Oz, featuring Temple herself as Princess Ozma and Tip.

Well, in Shirley's own words, “Sometimes the gods know best.”

Adventure in Oz

Last week if you'd asked me "What was the first Oz video or computer game?" I would have said the Windham Classics Wizard of Oz. But I happened to be looking through the Classic Adventure Solution Archive yesterday, and I randomly decided to search "Oz."

As one does.

And I happened to find an entry called "Adventure in Oz." To be honest, I wondered if it was a mis-listing of my own text adventure "My Adventure in Oz." But it was something different, a game from 1983, predating the Windham Classics game by a year.

So, knowing there's a huge subculture of emulating old computer games online, I hit Google to see if I could find more information on this game, or even, find how to download and play the game myself. By the time I went to bed, I found a blog entry from someone who had managed to emulate and play the game and three different downloads of the game, plus finding it in another format and finding an emulator to run it.

The platform for the game was the TI-99/4A, a short-lived early computer from Texas Instruments. How was the game packaged?

This isn't box art. It's cover art. "Same thing," some classic gamers might say, but wrong. This is a book. Instead of putting the games on disks, tapes or cartridges for sale, the code for the game was printed in the book and those wanting to play it had to enter it manually before they could. Well, you don't risk getting a corrupted file. Just have to make sure you do it right and not get a typo. The fun thing is, the book is available for free online viewing at Archive.org. This means that if you REALLY want to play it old school, you can type in all twelve pages of code into an emulator and create the files you'd need to play the game. Luckily for me, it was already done and available in three different places.

"Adventures in Oz" requires a number of expansions to play. In the emulator Win994a, I had to go to preferences, turn on the memory expansion option, turn it to the 16Bit Fast addressing, and the speech synthesizer. Furthermore, you have to load the TI Extended Basic cartridge, which the emulator comes supplied with an emulated version of. After loading the disk and the cartridge images into the emulator, it's time to get started. You press a key to begin the emulator, select the number for the Extended Basic prompt, and then enter the command—in all caps—RUN "DSK1.OZ" and press enter.

Alternately, you could enter RUN "DSK1.RAINBOW" and hear a computer system from 1983 synthesize "Over the Rainbow" in one minute...

Want to hear #OverTheRainbow from #TheWizardOfOz played by a TI-9/94? #Oz This is a side program found with the program "Adventure in Oz," released by Steve Davis Publishing in 1983, the first ever Oz digital game.

A post shared by OzCon International (@ozconinternational) on Jul 29, 2017 at 8:27pm PDT

Anyway, on to the actual game.

The game features fairly decent graphics by 1983 computer game standards, a few synthesized bars of "Off To See The Wizard," as well as some sound effects and the above mentioned version of "Over the Rainbow."

Pressing any key launches the opening text/cinematic that identifies the player as taking the role of Dorothy and gets the idea across that you're carried in your house by tornado to the Land of Oz.

You start randomly in a location in Oz, and yes, all you do is press keys, each location giving you some sort of message. If you're trying to play, pro-tip, keep the caps lock key on as entering commands in lower case does nothing.

What exactly does the Map key do?

It brings up a book-based map of Oz, which shows your location with an X, so it's possible to get an idea of where you are. Steve Davis (no relation, as far as I know) says it's based on the International Wizard of Oz Club's map, which is why the Munchkins are on the right side of the screen, rather than a design matching Baum's Tik-Tok of Oz endpaper map. Yes, the in-game screens are colored to match the region of Oz you're in.

So, the concept of the game is that you go to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, who promises to send you back if you complete one of four tasks he gives you: get the Woggle-Bug's magic powder, Glinda's ruby slippers, Ozma's magic belt, or the Wicked Witch's Golden Cap. After receiving your orders, you must head out into that section of Oz to find the item you're looking for and return to the Emerald City.

Matching the tone of Oz and pre-dating The Secret of Monkey Island, this is a game where you can't lose and can't die, so you're free to explore Oz as you wish, but the game asks you to play in as few turns as possible. Going to a blocked off area (bodies of water or the Deadly Desert) results in no progress and a turn wasted. Checking the map also uses a turn.

I completed my first game in 88 turns, where I was tasked to get the Golden Cap from the Wicked Witch. I headed west from Emerald City, crossed a river and finally found the Wicked Witch.

I was using the first version of the game that I'd found for this one, which the other guy's blog entry said had typographical errors, so I assume those graphic glitches are a result of that. (Also, "Muncchkin.")

I was a little stuck for what to do here until a little cinematic started. I watched in surprise as a mass of black pixels representing Toto moved across the screen and a yellow patch appeared under the Witch, who disappeared into it.

With that done, it was back tracking to the Emerald City, and the game was complete. With a full round of "Over The Rainbow," I was back at the command prompt.

So, surprisingly, this old game actually has replay value with a varying quest and over 700 locations, probably at least half of them I didn't see on this play-through. Also, the game can be completed in a rather short time.

It's also a concept I'd like to see in a new Oz video game, exploring the Land of Oz with varying quests and puzzles. With the leaps and bounds computer and video games have come in the last 34 years, it could be quite an interesting game.

I stopped my writing to do another playthrough with a different disk image I found. This time I was tasked to get the Woggle-Bug's magic powder (Powder of Life or... ???), ran into a couple "Wishway" locations that can randomly teleport you anywhere in Oz, and a road that takes you in the reverse direction that you want to go in. Also, there was a skywriting witch cinematic in the Emerald City, although if anything comes of this, I don't know. So, the game uses the Land of Oz from Baum's books with music and touches from the MGM film, and also some elements from Ruth Plumly Thompson's books.

If you want to play this game, here's the disk I just played on my Google Drive. If you use Win994a, put it in the "Disks" subfolder in the programs' installation folder.

Now to finish, here's some additional screenshots.

Short and Sweet: The Life and Times of the Lollipop Munchkin

When L. Frank Baum first described the people who live in Oz, specifically the Munchkins, he described them in this manner:

They were not as big as the grown folk she had always been used to; but neither were they very small. In fact, they seemed about as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age...

But when MGM adapted Baum's story for their classic film, they hired Leo Singer to bring his troupe of midgets to depict these pint-sized people of Oz. Why? Perhaps they merged the idea of the Munchkins with the Dainty China Country. Perhaps they were inspired to channel the short and stocky look of W.W. Denslow's pictures of the people of Oz. Perhaps they decided to dial the whimsical nature of Oz up to an 11. Or perhaps having little people in film was a trend and MGM saw a chance to work it into their take on Oz.

Short and Sweet: The Life and Times of the Lollipop Munchkin is a memoir by Jerry Maren, who played one of the Munchkins, one who can clearly be seen in several shots in Munchkinland, and is finally revealed as a member of the Lollipop Guild, particularly the one who hands Dorothy the lollipop that quickly disappears from the film. Today, Jerry is the last surviving little person to play a Munchkin in the film.

Short and Sweet opens with a foreword by Sid Krofft who remembers how he came to meet Jerry. A bit more informative is the introduction by Steve Cox, who also has a bit of co-author credit. Cox informs of us of the terms "dwarf" and "midget," and how Jerry doesn't mind the latter term. He gives us a bit of information on how Hollywood used little people in their productions, setting up for Jerry's story.

Cox informs us that Jerry is of few words, but there will be plenty of pictures, which is true. I suspect that Cox's co-author role comes from collecting and possibly even transcribing Jerry's anecdotes on his life and career.

The book comes off as a very personal memoir. Maren rarely drops exact years and dates, which feels what someone trying to recall their life would do: you can remember generally when these happened, but rarely the specific dates.

Maren talks about his childhood, how he coped with being a pituitary midget, how his parents attempted treatments to make him grow taller, and how he got into show business. While the "Singer Midgets" were a troupe, for The Wizard of Oz—Maren's first role in Hollywood—a call went out for little people looking for work. He reveals his father refused to let him work on another film—The Terror of Tiny Town, an all-little people western that other Oz Munchkins worked on—because it wouldn't pay for getting Jerry to where the film would be shooting and the salary wouldn't make it up. But Oz would cover those costs, so Jerry was allowed to go and wound up becoming immortalized on celluloid.

Because so many people have asked Jerry about his work on The Wizard of Oz, he spends a good amount of time detailing that experience. He doesn't directly say it, but his career in show business basically began because Oz brought him to Hollywood and he never left, taking jobs in television and film that IMDb lists as recently as 2010. His work led him to meet many fascinating people, who he mentions briefly. It's very off the cuff.

He also recalls his work in promotions, as Buster Brown for Buster Brown, and one of the little people portraying Oscar Meyer's "Little Chef." He also talks about how he met and worked with Billy Barty, and supported him in found Little People of America. Late in the book, he talks about how he happily met his wife Elizabeth and how they've done many jobs together, including costume work for McDonald's commercials.

The final chapter is titled "Oz Revisited" and he talks about how he and other surviving Munchkin actors reunited and attended Oz events and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In addition, he tells of working on the film Under the Rainbow—a comedy inspired by urban legends about Munchkin actor shenanigans at MGM during the filming of Oz—and the television movie The Dreamer of Oz, where he played a Munchkin once again.

The book is an enjoyable read, not very long or detailed. I suppose someone researching further could create a longer and more detailed biography of Maren, but his own narrative is quite welcome. To anyone wanting to read more about MGM's The Wizard of Oz, I don't think you'll actually find a lot of information you wouldn't find in books like The Making of the Wizard of Oz and the trio of books by Bill Stillman and Jay Scarfone, but you do get to read it from the perspective of someone who was actually there. It's also very interesting to see what else people who have been involved with Oz have also worked with.

So, I recommend this one. And thanks, Sam, for getting it for me sometime back!

The Royal Podcast of Oz: Lion of Oz audio commentary

Jay and Sam meet up in their hotel room at Oz Con International 2017 and watch Lion of Oz, the animated adaptation of Roger S. Baum's Lion of Oz and the Badge of Courage, and give you their live comments and criticisms of the movie.

(A standard review episode will be recorded and released soon.)

You can listen, download and subscribe at the podcast site, or use the players and links below. The Royal Podcast of Oz is available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Google Play Music and other podcast services and aggregators that mirror these.



Download this episode (right click and save)

The Land of Stories concluded

A couple years ago, I reviewed the first four books of a non-Oz fantasy series on the blog because the fourth book had a little visit to Oz: Chris Colfer's The Land of Stories. In that review, I happened to say this:

There also seems to be an overarching plot in the series, but to discuss that further might drop too many spoilers. It might be coming to a head at the end of Beyond the Kingdoms, or else we might be in for a huge twist.

Turns out I was right as the series has released its sixth and final book, Worlds Collide. There are spin-off books already, from a diary of Colfer's take on Mother Goose, to a treasury book of classic fairy tales that play into The Land of Stories, to a couple of picture books. With the series concluded, a film adaptation of the series is set to begin pre-production, and the author has teased he has ideas for more spin-offs.

Well, for the sake of being complete and the thin excuse that the Tin Woodman reappears in the fifth and sixth books, as well as the Wicked Witch of the West also popping up in the final book, let's take a look at those two books.

An Author's Odyssey winds up being the bridging chapter between Beyond the Kingdoms and Worlds Collide, and I felt was the weakest book in the series. Not that it was bad, but while it introduces many great new characters and has some exciting twists and plot developments, it doesn't really stand on its own.

Using the Portal Potion, Conner and Alex dive into Conner's own short stories to recruit the heroes of his own tales to assist in the fight against the Masked Man and the witches who he's won to his side. There's pirates, space cyborgs, mummies, superheroes, and even a "rosary chicken" who resulted from a misspelling of "rosemary." Meanwhile, things are not developing well in the Land of Stories as the witches prepare for their assault on "the Otherworld." Also, where are all the realized fictional characters going to stay?

This brings us to the last book, Worlds Collide. It opens with an 80 year old Conner at an event celebrating his books, when a fan asks him a question he can't recall the answer to: what happened to his twin sister Alex?

And then picking up where An Author's Odyssey left off, we cycle through a number of plots, leading to a big showdown that goes from the Land of Stories to New York City, starting at The New York Public Library and leading into the streets as the attacking witches have cursed Alex to do their bidding. It's an exciting ending that sees all of the characters come back to make a united front against wicked magic, but will it be enough? And will all of our friends make it out alive?

There is, surprisingly, a scene where a character writes a short story about J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum coming back to life so they can use the Portal Potion to consult with the authors on how to defeat the villains they created. Unfortunately, this visit is not described and the character only reports on what they learned. When they talk about consulting with Baum, they briefly mention "it's nice to know the movie depicted something correctly."

Overall, I was glad with how the series ended and would still recommend it to other Oz fans interested in other fantasy series. Colfer keeps his characterizations strong and his gift of giving the characters delightful dialogue is still very much at play. And—as said—there's a few Oz Easter eggs in the series for fans.

Sigh. Well, what do I read now? Hmm, what's this from Christmas last year?

Uh oh.